Preparations for Olympics in Sochi 2014 are Well Under Way

While preparations for Sochi 2014 are well under way as the pictures show, with 500 days to go to the Olympic Games, the slogan has been revealed as “Жаркие.Зимние.Твой.”, which roughly translates to “Hot.Cool.Yours.” Netizens have lashed out against the slogan, sparking a trend on Twitter to suggest humorous alternatives, while the perennial dispute about the legacy of the Games continues.

Preparations for the Sochi 2014 Olympic Games

At the weekend, BigPicture were pleased to inspect Sochi in the run-up to the games. Our first impression after landing was that the town was solid with construction sites and traffic jams. Seriously, at times it seemed that the country’s entire construction industry had migrated to the Sochi region. Anything and everything is being built: roads, buildings, sports facilities, hotels, and so on.

We attended the opening of the Olympic technology centre, which was launched by the companies Rostelekom and Krasnaya Polyana at the base of Rosa Khutor Alpine Resort, which will host the Olympic Alpine skiing competition.

If you knew how much trouble the Olympics has brought and is bringing to the local residents … almost no-one’s happy that the Games will be here.

dyaster: (responding to above)

Well, all of this will be left to the local residents, so the flow of tourists after the Olympics will only increase … no?

***: (also responding to evalotta)

I’m more than certain that local residents weren’t happy when they were evicted and the Eiffel Tower was built in their place, or the Champs Elysées, or the Hermitage, or Red Square, and all the rest. It’s not possible that everybody is always happy. The value of what’s being created now will be appreciated by our descendants.

evalotta: (responding to above)

The descendants of the bureaucrats will appreciate a huge amount of laundered money.

Ирина:

At least read the site “PrivetSochi”. There they explain clearly the situation in the town and with the residents. And yet, here’s another post praising the Olympics that I want to spit on.

dyaster: (responding to above)

We were in Sochi for two days, and we wrote about what we saw. We were in your wild traffic jams, we saw your unfinished construction sites. Yeah, that’s all there. But you can’t deny that you’ve got a new, modern airporst, they’re building roads, they’re building a European ski resort, really, can you?

Ledi And…..:

Everything that’s left after the Olympics will be scattered amongst the bureaucrats. Once again they’re lying to us, and they won’t give us anything.

Editor of russiaSLAM, Joe Innes, loves all things Russian (well - most things!) and is currently living in St. Petersburg. Please feel free to get in touch by Twitter, Facebook, or by using the contact form on the "About" page.

In all honesty, it makes about as much sense in Russian as it does in English. Although “Hot.Cool.Yours” is the official English version of the slogan, the Russian is “Жаркие.Зимние.Твой”. The first word means “hot” literally, but can also mean “passionate”. The second word is more literally “wintery”. However, this doesn’t sound very exciting, and I think that “cool” works well because it has the same sort of double meaning in English as the Russian word for “hot”. The last word is just “yours”, with no additional meaning.